


bang dream presents

by myriadThalassas



Category: Professional Wrestling, 新日本プロレス | New Japan Pro-Wrestling
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen, NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 14
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-24 22:20:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22225417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myriadThalassas/pseuds/myriadThalassas
Summary: A series of drabbles I wrote and will write about (some of) the matches that took place at New Japan Pro Wrestling's Wrestle Kingdom 14.
Relationships: Dragon Lee/Takahashi Hiromu also if you squint, El Desperado | Mikami Kyosuke/Zack Sabre Jr. if you squint
Comments: 16
Kudos: 10





	1. Night 1, Preshow Match 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really out of practice writing fanfiction (again), but gosh darn was WK 14 fantastic. Title from...well, you know.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mayu Iwatani and Arisa Hoshiki def. Hana Kimura and Giulia.

It seemed a lifetime ago (yet, somehow, always too close, whenever she stopped to think for even a moment): those long, lonely days locked up, afraid to dream, dreaming her life away. Even now, she doesn’t really know how she got from _there_ to here, traded baggy t-shirts for sparkling sports bras, chips for protein shakes—the four walls of her room for the four sides of the ring.

She doesn’t _need_ to know that though, does she? Not when she was _here_ , in the Tokyo Dome, in front of a crowd that felt ten times bigger than the biggest number she could think of (and she’d learned to count pretty high, since beginning to wrestle). Here, she didn’t need to know anything; here, there was nothing but what you _felt,_ the song in your heart and the welts on your skin.

She isn’t surprised when she suddenly finds herself on the top turnbuckle, considering the prone form below her; she’d been doing this long enough that she was pretty sure she could wrestle a match asleep. Still, this has always been her favorite part: the balance, the slow rise, the brace, and only then—

As she arches into a moonsault, the sound of the crowd mingling with the frenzied clicking of camera shutters, she turns her eyes heavenward and gives a breathless laugh.


	2. Night 1, Match 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naoki Sano, Shinjiro Otani, Tatsuhito Takaiwa, and Ryusuke Taguchi (accompanied by Kuniaki Kobayashi) def. Jushin Thunder Liger, Tatsumi Fujinami, The Great Sasuke, and Tiger Mask IV (accompanied by El Samurai).

There was a saying in English, he was rather sure, that went like this: “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” He was of the opinion that whoever said that, perhaps, had done so before professional wrestling had been invented, for after over three decades of it he had come to a realization: if there ever was a difference between the two in this sport, it was quickly sanded away. Everyone ended close in professional wrestling; figuratively, literally. Sometimes _too_ close, whether it be via love or hate. And all bled and sweat and cried in the ring, didn’t they?

—or maybe he was just being sentimental, mistaking personal experience for generalization. Was this one of the inevitabilities of growing old? Still, surrounded by his friends—his enemies—his fellow wrestlers—when it is he who, as was his duty and odd pleasure as the center of this strange, wonderful web, spurs them all to raise their hands and bow, he finds that, at the moment, he doesn’t really mind the thought.


	3. Night 1, Match 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suzuki-gun (El Desperado, Minoru Suzuki, Taichi and Zack Sabre Jr.) def. Los Ingobernables de Japon (Sanada, Evil, Shingo Takagi, and Bushi).

The bell rings. He leans forward against the ropes, watching.

(He was far from a bleeding heart “critic” who droned on and on about how professional wrestling was somehow some form of higher _art_ , but there really _was_ something about it sometimes that both horrified you and thrilled you, made spectators never want to look away. The Boss was a master at being so—for lack of a better term— _captivating_ ; even if he wasn’t a member of the gun, he thinks he’d probably still place him at the top in that regard.

His favorite, though, was definitely giving him a run for his money.)

The bell rings again, and again, and again; the unfortunate victim squirms against his captor, twisted as easily as filigree wire. If he had breath, he wonders, as he often does during points like this, what would be said? Would he cry? Curse? Beg? Probably the second, if he thought about it; Los Ingobernables wasn’t known for intelligence nor class.

The referee shouts, telling him in two languages to _let go._ Of course, the man in the ring doesn’t seem to listen, not until the very last moment, and he can’t help but roll his eyes at the dramatics—but then he turns his face towards them, sweaty and smirking and starry-eyed, and as it often does during points like _this,_ his heart can’t help but skip a beat.


	4. Night 1, Match 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chaos (Hirooki Goto, Yoshi-Hashi, Tomohiro Ishii and Toru Yano) def. Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Chase Owens, Kenta and Yujiro Takahashi).

They had won, of course—why wouldn’t they have? Even _if_ the Bullet Club had Bad Luck Fale, they clearly had the stronger team overall: the vicious, hard-hitting Stone Pitbull; the determined, never-say-die YOSHI-HASHI; and, of course, there was himself—gifted amateur wrestler, decorated ambassador, and constant G1 Climax threat. Really, if he wasn’t humble enough to downplay his credentials he’d be selling far more DVDs than he did.

Oh, and Goto was there too, he supposes. Always reliable, that one, if nothing else.

To his credit, the man’s finishing move—the GPS? Oh, wait, he was _pretty_ sure it was the GTC—looked, sounded, and probably felt brutal; Takahashi hadn’t moved at all since the three count, save for the staccato rise and fall of his chest. He would be lying if he didn’t say he felt _some_ sense of satisfaction at that, with what revenge being a dish served cold (he should know; he had tried to fit it on his bar’s menu to no avail).

For some reason, though, his attention remains on Yujiro as he gets into the ring, ready to get his hand raised. His eyes, glassy, are staring up at the ceiling of the Dome, his breathing so slow and shallow that for a horrible moment he thinks the other is dead. As the audience cheers, he spares a glance upwards as well; nothing.

He comes back to his immediate surroundings just in time to get out of the way of the burgeoning confrontation between KENTA and Goto. He steps back from the ring, far enough that he sees Takahashi finally roll under the ropes and begin, unnoticed by his fellow Bullet Club members, the long trek back to the locker room.

And if he thinks he saw a rather discomfiting smile on those bloodless lips as he hobbled away, he quickly concludes it is none of his business.


	5. Night 1, Match 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon Moxley def. Lance Archer for the IWGP United States Championship.

His arms are hooked, his head secured; any moment now, he would be driven through the tables below to a undoubtedly rapturous reaction. The realization, rather than energizing a struggle, leaves him calm, quiet—but not limp. If he was going to have to do this, he might as well hunch tall.

A long moment passes. As the crowd’s anticipation reaches fever pitch, they just stand there, close enough that he hears, very faintly, the beating of the other’s heart: wild and off-tempo as the rest of him. He was running on fumes as well, he could tell, more adrenaline than oxygen in his thrumming blood. _He_ did that to him, he muses. _He,_ far more than the belt he carried, was the reason the the other had to go so far. It’s a pleasant thought, almost assuaging the sting of inevitable loss.

A sharp, sharkish grin—of pride? Of resignation?—spreads across his face as they leap.

(He was a fighter—or, at the very least, he was always fighting: the scraps of childhood, bouncing at nightclubs, destroying people in the ring. He gave pain away like Halloween candy, shouted at the top of his lungs that _everybody dies_. And he truly, honestly believed it—for if not him, who could feel his strength leaving him little by little with each passing day, who was only hitting his prime at the end of it—then who else would dare speak the truth?)

God forgive me, he thinks with elation before it all goes black, for being such a fool.


	6. Night 1, Match 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiromu Takahashi def. Will Ospreay for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship.

He has the _best_ entrance music, he thinks to himself as he makes his way down the ramp. Fitting for the best junior heavyweight in the world, much less New Japan. Everything about him screamed that, didn’t it—his outfit, his body, the look in his eyes. No one at this event, not even the participants in that double gold dash or whatever they were calling it now, wanted to hang on to a belt more, had trained their hardest to do so—and not only would he steal the show as he always did, but he’d win in the process.

He could do this. He could do this.

Already in the ring, he sees his opponent watching him. He doesn’t need to look at the screen to know he is smirking, lips lopsided in a cat’s smile.

( _I’m just so confident that I’ve outgrown Hiromu_ , he had said during his interview, every inch the gracious, put-together champion. Now, as he postures to the crowd that loves him, he hears that sentence bouncing around in his head, a mocking echo that chips away at his carefully constructed confidence. _He’s better than you and you fucking know it_ , the voices add, sounding very much like himself, just before he’s able to shut the thoughts out completely. _Has always been, even with the ring rust. That’s not hard, though. You’re just—_

At that point, he manages to bolt the door. This isn’t the first time he’s heard them, and he knows it’ll far from the last. But he also knows—just _knows—_ they are wrong.

They have to be.)


	7. Night 1, Match 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tetsuya Naito def. Jay White (accompanied by Gedo) for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship.

He saunters towards his destiny dressed in spotless white, hair falling loosely about his shoulders—he might have been an angel, if angels wore leather and knife pendants and dyed their tips green. In other words, he wasn’t at all; still, the thought amuses him (though what _hadn’t_ been funny about anything related to this whole double gold affair?), injects some real mirth into his sly smile just in time for the cameras. Some ways behind, Gedo leers, both at the audience and at the Ungovernable One who already stands, decidedly unimpressed, in the ring.

(—yes, yes, it’s all a bit _extra_ , but that was the point: to get everyone to lower their guard. People had always underestimated him; might as well play into it and have some fun in the process.)

He ducks into the squared circle; the announcer calls their names; the bell rings. From the outset, the match is mostly under his control, paced his way and played by his rules. When he first started implementing this game plan, to break guidelines rather than merely bend them, he had been, admittedly, awkward, stilted, almost hesitant (the worst offense; as if _he_ would ever hesitate to win!); now, if he could say so himself, he was elevating outright cheating to a higher art form. Sure, that led to pissed off fans and lower star ratings—but pleasing other people was a Young Lion’s foolish preoccupation, not a champion’s. Work smart and not hard, all the old farts said, and as much as he’d rather not listen to a bunch of broken-down obsoletes he could admit that they had the right idea in this specific case. Fuck, he was so close to that shining light he could almost taste it.

And then, of course, it all goes horribly, horribly wrong.

When he comes to on the mat, all he sees is red. It’s justified, isn’t it?—the door to his destiny was just slammed in his face, and once again he was stuck in a line. Somehow he had added to the nightmare that was Bullet Club losing all night; all they had left was the frankly worthless NEVER belt, and there was a chance KENTA might have it slip from his hands tomorrow anyway. In fact, he would say it was a _good_ chance—Goto had a strange sort of energy around him, every Wrestle Kingdom—and _then_ they would be left with nothing while Naito fought Okada in the main event (no one _really_ believed Ibushi would win, did they?) With how much the universe seemed to want to spite him, he wouldn’t even be surprised if the fucker actually walked out of tomorrow with everything. Just thinking about his legions of adoring fans, calling out the names of each member of his stupid faction in an honest to God _role call,_ made him feel ill; Okada winning, while marginally better, would still be awful. If only someone would—oh.

_Oh._

The idea is terrible and disrespectful and, as such, absolutely _perfect;_ he throws an arm over his face to muffle his sudden fit of sobbing laughter. For once, he is grateful no one is looking at him.

He was stuck having to wrestle a loser’s match tomorrow night, it was true. Equally true was the fact that his dash had been waylaid by _Naito_ , of all people. But didn’t they say that sometimes you had to close a door to open a window?


	8. Night 1, Match 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kazuchika Okada def. Kota Ibushi to retain the IWGP Heavyweight Championship.

Even for someone as good as him—and that was as much a fact as there could be one in this sport—dominating an entire bout was a bit much to ask for. Of _course_ he had pushed himself to peak conditioning, had studied his opponent, had made his plans; at the same time, however, there were things you just couldn’t account for: mistakes, sudden opportunities—and, in this specific case, the mind of Kota Ibushi. He prepared always for the eventuality, rather than a possibility, that at some point he’d be the one down on the mat. Such was the fickle ebb and flow of a professional wrestling match.

Yes, he was more than aware. He hadn’t expected, however, that _this_ was the way the tides would turn.

The breath is driven out of his lungs once again as another solid punch finds his back. Simply, it hurts, but he gathers up enough of himself to continue crawling to the corner. Above the roaring in his ears, he senses the crowd is muted, torn between celebrating that their beloved Golden Star now had the upper hand and shock regarding his methods. If he wasn’t in so much pain right now he might have smirked; if their roles right now were switched, he knew what sort of reaction _he’d_ get.

He reaches his destination, but it gives him little respite: there is another blow, this time on his head, and for a moment he is quite sure he’s about to vomit. He elects to cover up instead, the referee frantically shouting at his opponent to stop, threatening disqualification.

For some reason, he didn’t think the other cared.

After countless hits, he reaches out blindly, brushes against his only hope. He endures a few more punches to gauge their rhythm; then, just as the other, he imagines, pulls his hand back to knock him out for good, he takes his chance and rolls under the ropes.

Then, and only then, does he open his eyes. Inevitably, his gaze wanders to meet Ibushi’s, only to find—

(The _Dark Star_ , he sees fans calling it on social media the next day. He thinks back to what he had seen—or, rather, what he _hadn’t—_ and quietly agrees.)


	9. Night 2, Match 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hiromu Takahashi and Ryu Lee def. Jushin Thunder Liger and Naoki Sano (accompanied by Yoshiaki Fujiwara).

His partner finds him lounging in the LIJ locker room exactly ten minutes and thirty-seven seconds before their match. On the television screen mounted across them, the fight for the NEVER 6-Man belts rolls on; he spares a cursory glance at the scene, just long enough to confirm that they were still in contention, before turning his gaze back to the far more interesting sight currently tapping a foot in front of him.

“Yes?” he purrs. Over the bench he is draped on, he begins to stretch sore muscles; as much as he’d soundly beaten dear Will the night before, he had to admit that the Brit had grown much in the time he’d been away, not the least in the strength of his strikes.

The man the commentators would undoubtedly slip up over and call Dragon Lee continues to look breathtakingly disinterested in his preparatory exercises, even—to his delight—crossing his arms over his chest. Behind the mask, dark eyes narrow and lips purse to complete the picture—but he continues to say nothing.

Goodness, how he loved him!

The silence continues; a sage nod in response as he pulls at his legs. One did not become as _uniquely_ acquainted with the other man as he was without learning to read his brooding. “If you’re worried about poor old me _,_ don’t. Will didn’t hit me _that_ hard. Besides, I’m sure tonight won’t be half as hard a match to win.” A joyful little laugh, brighter in the face of a pointed stare. “Not that I’m underestimating Liger-san or Sano-san, of course. But I’m not facing them alone, am I?”

“I’m not here to listen to your speeches,” Lee interrupts.

He claps, once. “And so he deigns to speak! Do you want your turn to talk, then?”

The other man just narrows his eyes. To this unspoken pressure he meets it his usual way: namely, with a lazy smile and a steel gaze. Without breaking eye contact, he reaches slowly for his neck and cracks it with one languid motion; the other doesn’t flinch—doesn’t move at all.

His smile turns a little more genuine, then. For a few heartbeats he enjoys the quiet, before:

“Your team’s won.” Already his back is turned. “Let’s go.”

He lets the other walk away, standing only when he hears the footsteps pause only a bit away from view. Grinning from ear to ear, he grabs his mask and coat and follows him out.


End file.
